Over the weekend Muriwai's golden son, multi Auckland Champion Mikey Phillips put out an Insty post about two NZ Surfing mags from 20 years ago. The first one was his cover issue the July/August 2002 mag and the second 18 months later, the Nov/Dec 2003 issue. Mikey featured heavily in both issues. Well, you can't feature more heavily than being on page One. This post is all about Mikey's cover mag.
I was the Senior Photographer and Editor of the magazine at the time, halfway through my 15 year tenure at the surf mag. The early 2000's were a hugely significant era in surf print worldwide, and especially here in NZ. The business of surfing was about to blow up. With that surf print went nuts too, advertising revenue went through the roof and so did readership. Now I'm going to try and explain this without boring you. The AC Neilsen audit/survey was what all advertising agencies used to figure out where to place their brands. They would charge publications royally to be a part of the survey, and you either lived by the good result or died with a bad one.
In 2002 the publisher, David Hall, and I felt like it was time to throw the very pricey dice and join the survey. The first 6 monthly survey result was out of control, the readership came in at 145,000 per issue. We freaked out, not in the good way, we thought the figure was fanciful and way too high, that the next 6 monthly survey would be a half or even a 1/4 that. That to put out this 145,000 readers per issue would be laughed at, and then when it settled next round the magazine would look like it was slipping.
David Hall summoned in the AC Neilsen rep for 'a please explain' meeting. The rep assured us that the figures were accurate, that they wouldn't change greatly. That being a youth targeted publication, NZ Surfing Mag had an accepted high pass-on rate. AC Neisen put it in double digits for readers per copy sold. We had spent years getting the magazine into every high school library in the country. We'd worked super hard on our distribution and subscription base. But the pass-on rate was crazy, it meant we could go to Ad Agencies with regarded audited figures, the 145,000 meant NZ Surfing was the most popular youth magazine in NZ.... yes the most popular surf mag, but also the most popular against music, car, outdoors and fishing mags. We were literally top of the pops. It meant we started getting adverts from outside the surf industry like Watties Baked Beans, Primo [Fontera ] Britz Motorhomes and Lion Breweries all featured in Mikey's cover magazine 2002.
The issue featured a sick Gizzy Primo Roady, the second year of doing them, and we were getting good at them. One day I'll tell you the Primo story, it's a good tale of branding and marketing.
The opening spread is Gizzy shaper Tommy Dalton, with Mikey in the far left corner. It's ok, but a bit dark in the shadows, film was still all we used in 2002, this was on Velvia 50 asa transparency film. The surf photographers standard for its fine grain and deep colour saturation. The downside of Velvia was it has no shadow detail at all, I should have compensated for that with the front lit angle.
Mikey, and I'm pretty sure a different wave than the cover.
Jay Papworth in the centrefold...The cover verses centrefold choice came down to Mikey's barrel was clean, Pappy's had that little bit of spray around his face... tough call.
Mikey's cover shot went on to be published as a double page spread in the giant US mag Surfing and later used on a Kea Car billboard nationwide. And of course had to be used in the PHOTOCPL book
In a tiny bottom corner of a page in that issue is a heart melter. The woman who would go on to be our 2013 World Junior Champ, win National Champs, and of course be our first surfing woman olympian.
How's Ella's hand written letter! And Ella still has the board, it is on display the Williamson's surf shop, The Whanga Surf Shop. I blackmailed Ella into a selfie today.
So stoked on your achievements mate.
Next week, I'll cover Mikey's second issue which also marks significant changes 18 months on. Let me know if this stuff interests you...like really, email me back with your thoughts.
FROM THE BOOK SHOP
Yess back in its third print. The Big Little Beach Book is available again, it is slowly getting into books stores and surf shops over the next few weeks. You can buy The Big Little Beach Book through the PhotoCPL Website HEREnow, if you want it now.